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Some cables are pacesetters. They are front-loaded on the leading edge and often incisive, jumpy, wiry, caffeinated. Others are bodybuilders fresh out of the gym, pumped up and radiating vitality. Yet others prioritize dynamic reflexes or an ultra vivid treble. None of these are the IN-TIM's primary stomping grounds. Its bailiwick are tone, temporal ease, relaxation, a certain textural sophistication and minor lushness. This is not a loom to pursue maximal detail magnification. It's likely no coincidence that both Boenicke and soundkaos had collaborated with Absolue Créations for various hifi shows. These speakers too prioritize full tonal weight and concomitant warmth to fall in line. It's a loom of some minor bloom.
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For final confirmation on the effectiveness of my French loom sketch, I hung off it the Grand Cru Audio Horizon speakers still on hand from their review. The one quality I'd meant to enhance for those French boxes internally wired with Absolue was this particular aspect. The Pathos Logos MkII amplifier had pushed them far too deep into vintage valve bloom to suit. Attempting a far more tailored injection not with a component but complete cable swap was conveniently on hand now. Vis-à-vis the Zu Event set I'd used during the formal Horizon review, I indeed managed to graft a small but meaningful fraction of the Pathos voicing atop the Horizon for just the right touch of tone mass.
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Emerging like a cave dweller from my reluctnik exile, I had to admit it. There was life beyond Zu. The Frenchies were just as easy to route, unobtrusive of girth and dressed in conservative gray to elude the eye rather than attract it. Absolue's mix of loose ease, expansive staging, emphasis on lengthy decays and minor softness/warmth proposed a more 'romantic' evening setting. Zu's high-noon bright light of day vibe was freshly showered and starched by contrast. Until the day that the audiophile race graduates to very advanced DSP-driven wireless active speakers à la Goldmund ProLogos to throw out all line-level and speaker cables, we sadly remain hostage to cable colourations. Comparing various looms and their effects on sonics... well, colouration really is the operative term. That being the case, the choice is ours. Which flavour do we like best or think most true? It's far from a scientific approach or neat conclusion. The earlier 'just ones and zeroes' reductionism for general cable differences which many still repeat ad nauseam for digital cables has simply acknowledged it for decades now. Cables do sound different. The right choice will make your system more pleasing.
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How much money should one allocate to chase the colourations most pleasing? That's an utterly personal call. It should ideally be done once the key hardware components are in place and wired up with good-enough affordable stuff to hang together. Then it becomes sensible to experiment with cable-induced flavour shifts, evaluate their extent and how much that's worth to us. Here one shouldn't underestimate the possible extent of difference. If past experience is a trustworthy indicator, low-level signal seems more susceptible to cable swaps than the more robust less fussy signal between amp and speaker. And power cords for all their arch-mundane job description can be at least as influential as interconnects. I wish it weren't so. Regardless, complete looms seem best to get coherent results.
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Thumbs up. Whilst Absolue's power cords are about an inch thick, they behave like limpid slinkies filled with a light fluid, not springy metal. The signal cable mates are just as non-wiry to be a true breeze to install. The locking Furutech RCAs are top class as are the usual Neutrik XLRs. On sound the ideal customer for the Absolue Créations cable loom focuses on tonal texturization, soundstage scale and a relaxed warm milieu with lots of inherent airiness. In popular perception, it's the sound of advanced copper, no 'audible silver' in evidence (though there is silver plating on the physical level). And despite its mild warmth or softness, that quality doesn't originate with poor timing where it'd get blurry, fuzzy and thick but rather comes from being 'back-loaded' on the trailing edges similar to live music when a larger acoustic fluffs up the more incisive direct sound to give it body and redolence. If this cable were a speaker, it'd be an omni like my German Physiks HRS-120. Because that's the same effect it has on tone body and enhanced spaciousness. Over and out whilst I go abstinent again on cables for a good while. Back into my cave...
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